Specialized computing systems and communications protocols that enable the purchasing of goods are complex. In a given day, millions of electronic messages, signals and reports embodying goods to be displayed, inventory information, purchase orders, invoices, receipts, confirmations and the like are created, modified, transmitted, relayed, received, and otherwise processed amongst electronic commerce sites, customers, warehouses, manufacturers, fulfillment centers, couriers, logistics companies and other members and participants. Even businesses with physical storefronts (known as brick and mortar businesses in the art) typically use specialized computing systems and communications protocols to enable functions and processes such as keeping track of inventory, enabling sales, communicating with warehouses, etc. These complex, highly specialized systems and processes must be highly-reliable, accurate, rapid, efficient, and user-friendly in order to fulfill their intended functions. Despite the complexity of the highly specialized systems, there exists certain limitations.
For example, many products, such as groceries, personal care products, toiletries, even underwear and socks, are a recurring necessity as they either become worn after use or are consumed on a regular basis. To replace these items and replenish the stock, a customer needs to repeatedly purchase the products.
Each time the customer places a purchase, a new purchasing decision has to be made. Thus, it is to the advantage of both the customer and the vendor to reduce this trouble to a one-time inconvenience. The customer can then enjoy the product on a regular basis. Recently, there has been an emergence of services that allow customers to subscribe to tangible products, in which the products are delivered on a recurring basis. When consumers sign up for such services, there is no longer a need to go to the store, nor to spend time researching and hunting for items. The goal of the services is to make purchasing effortless. This convenience can be highly valued if the item is a recurring necessity and otherwise requires ongoing work by the customer.
The orders provided by the subscription service are known as subscription orders. They are also known by various other terms such as “recurring orders” and “standing orders”. Collectively, the business model is known as subscription commerce. The business model entails purchase orders covering repeated deliveries of goods or services in specified quantities, at specified prices, and according to a specified schedule.
The subscription business model is not new. Many of us have subscribed to magazines or newspapers, whereby a physical copy is delivered by mail on a regular basis. Such periodicals often contained a postcard, which a subscriber can fill out to manage their subscription (i.e., to cancel or extend subscription). However, what has changed recently is the means by which customers can interact and control their subscription. Namely, the technologies that have enabled electronic commerce are allowing customers to manage their subscription through a convenient web interface.
Thus, many technology-based startups have recently pushed the subscription business into product spaces far beyond magazines, newspapers, or other such periodicals that are common for traditional subscription orders. Examples of tangible products that are available to be delivered on a schedule range from personal care products such as razor blades, shampoo, and body wash, to toiletries, to clothing such as underwear and socks, to makeup, to groceries and foods, to pet foods, just to name a few.
The spirit of a subscription model is a convenience provided by the automated shipments based on a schedule, without the need for customer intervention. The effort needed to subscribe to a product is paid off when the customer neither has to worry about running out of needed necessities nor spend time repeatedly purchasing items. Such a convenience comes at the risk of over-delivery, however. If products are shipped on a schedule, a new delivery may be made before the item is consumed, worn, or needed again, leading to the accumulation of items at the customer's hands.
To solve the problem of accumulation of shipments, recent advances in computing have enabled subscription commerce businesses to give customers control of their shipping by providing customers access to a personalized dashboard (i.e., a web interface). Using the dashboard, customers may at any time modify their subscription (i.e., changing product selection, shipping schedule, and quantity per shipment), rush shipments to receive products sooner, or delay shipments. Some services give customers the option of skipping a month or putting their subscription on pause. Many services also allow customers to cancel their subscription without penalty. Some services also allow the customer to return shipments that are not needed.
While such advances in user experience and software interfaces have enabled customers to easily manage their subscription, manual intervention is still often needed to control the subscription. In other words, while delivery is automated on a schedule, customer intervention is still needed to pause, modify, or cancel their subscription to prevent repeated shipments of yet unused items. There are several reasons why frequent manual intervention is problematic.
First, the current subscription model is not truly convenient because the one-time inconvenience to set up the subscription is compounded by the recurring and ongoing inconveniences in having to manage the subscription each time an item is not yet needed but still is shipped based on a schedule.
Second, since the burden is on the customer to delay a shipment, human error can occur whereby a customer may forget to log into their account and delay the shipment. In addition, the onus is also on the customer to rush a shipment should they need an item before the scheduled ship date. Again, the customer may forget to manually rush the order leading to a shortage of the needed item. The problem is, at least in part, that manual management of subscribed items needs to be done on a computer or other computing device (i.e., a smartphone). This likely leads to human errors because customers often are only mindful of the amount of items they have when they are either receiving a shipment or using the item. In either case, it may be neither feasible nor convenient to find a computing device to manage the subscription of the item at that point in time.
Third, if a customer has subscribed to many products, the customer is troubled with the need to keep track of which physical item corresponds to which subscription entry on their account dashboard. The customer would need to log into their account, search and identify the item from potentially a large list of subscribed products, and verify that they are indeed managing the right item. As the list of subscribed products grow longer, the convenience offered by the subscription model would be eroded.
Thus, it can be seen that there remains a need in the art to provide a subscription system that overcomes the aforementioned shortcomings. Namely, there remains a need to increase the convenience to customers, by greatly relieving the customer of the burden to manually manage shipping and delivery, and thus minimizing the requirement for ongoing human intervention and effort.